Snow isn’t coming but the rains will

This year snow has failed to come. The annual white blanket that paints Thimphu is nowhere coming. And it is already April. I now think ‘Mr. Jack Frost’ needs to bless this mountain country. So I decided to write something down on Monsoon which I left unfinished in the fall last year.

Time to get those remedies on for what we see in the rainy season, as the monsoon brings everything possible to make humans like me stay home. This is the season of the wet. Umbrellas, flip-flops, perhaps a rectangular polythene might do the work just as well. Rains are a bounty for the farmers and for the rest of us it’s just a way of life. No complaints whatsoever for the rains. For travelers it’s a nightmare even to think of getting stranded on a road block. Such varied and difficult the monsoon can be!

I used to be a teacher in a very remote school once. Supposedly for being a very remote place, it had mule tracks for transportation, kerosene lamp for light and the traditional fire for cooking. This place is Degala in Zhemgang and it had all the attributes to make a typical Kheng village. One summer, I and other civil servants had to feed on ‘Kharang’ for a month because the mule tracks were washed away, porters weren’t willing to fetch our goods from the nearest road point. We ran low on provisions and I am sure every civil servant in a remote village undergoes this. Such is the power of monsoon.

Here in Thimphu I see the obvious umbrellas everywhere but these are fancy. Children who forgot their umbrellas would be drenched from head till toe. Drains clog and stink, cars splash water everywhere. In some parts of the city, car tires will be submerged as one drives. Thimphu in the outskirts looks clean. BBS will have more news and updates on road blocks and the most terrifying of all, the ‘Reotala’ stretch will again roar this summer. Careful to those residing before and after the stretch!

Monsoon brings a warm joy and one common thing it does is everyone stays indoors. It makes people do things at home unless something inevitable must come. The warmth and coziness of one’s home is such a beautiful thought. It gives families and closed ones to come together and chat over some meals or drinks. Why drinks? It has become customary even in towns to offer drinks to the guests.

So happy Monsoon-ing folks!